Category Archives: Parenting

Birth of the beat Music’s roots may lie in melodic exchanges between mothers and babies By Bruce Bower (originally published on www.sciencenews.org) At scientific meetings, psycho-biologist Colwyn Trevarthen often plays a video of a 5-month-old Swedish girl giving her mother a musical surprise. Blind from birth, the girl reaches for a bottle and laughs appreciatively as her mother launches into a familiar song about feeding blueberries to a bear. As in baby songs everywhere, Trevarthen says, each line of the Swedish tune runs about four seconds and each stanza lasts about 20. In a flash, the girl raises her left arm — an arm she has never seen — and begins conducting her mother’s performance. The baby, named Maria, moves her arm just before many of the song’s lines begin, leading her mother by about one-third of a second. In some cases, Maria synchronizes her hand movements with the rise … Continue reading →

She is now two and a half…. 8:30am… circle time is at 9:00am, can I make it on time? Is it important?…. Can I push her out the door in 20 min or should I let her indulge in a thousand and one distractions and be calm about it? She wants her “blue candy” we got for her yesterday, it’s resting on her “black chair” next to her crib. I give it to her. “You want a bottle baby?” “I do it.” “But Aba already made your bottle.”…. She starts crying. “No, I do it.” I take her out of her crib…. “I wanna walk.” “O.k.” I empty out a third of the bottle and we fill it up together. I give her the nipple cap. “Clean it.” It’s clean but I wash it for her anyway. We screw it on together; there is eternal happiness in her eyes when … Continue reading →